Concussions fall into three different categories, mild, moderate and severe, however they will all have at least some lasting effects. Concussions increase in 9- to 13-year-olds and college aged athletes who all compete in high-contact sports. Over the course of one season, these athletes are experiencing up to 1,200 incidents of concussion which can result in neurological damage due to underreporting (Godinho et al., 2025).
In a recent neuroscience seminar, Dr. Jennifer Krizman came and talked about concussions, especially in athletes and children. Dr. Krizman did this by collaborating with other researchers and using something called frequency following response (FFR) or auditory brainstem response to complex sounds (cABR). When someone has a concussion, there is an association between demyelination, axonal injury, and temporal and frontal cortices (Kraus et al., 2016). FFR can help by measuring neural activity to see the amplitude, timing, frequency, and accuracy of a sound coming into the ear. This can help see if there is any auditory process being affected by the mTBI.
There were 3 main differences between concussions, those benign reduced F0, Reduced harmonics, and timing delays. F0 is the fundamental pitch that everyone hears as the primary pitch. All concussions were found to suffer from reduced F0 encoding while prolonged concussion experiences timing delays and acute experienced timing delays and reduced harmonic encoding in addition to the reduced F0 encoding. They also have found that auditory processing may not fully recover after a concussion (Kraus et al., 2016). Another finding in this study was a focus on subconcussions which means there was no diagnosed concussion but there was some injury to the head. It was found that over a 4-year time span, men had a diminished level of auditory processing compared to females. It is reasoned that men take part in more collision sports which in turn can cause more of these subconcussions.
This can lead into the question, what does repeat concussions affect? A study taking place in 2025 examined repeated concussions during brain development, specifically critical stages, and seeing what changes lasted. In the end, they found that mild concussions that were repeated during adolescence produced alterations in the structure and function in the brain. These alterations led to behavior, showing more ADHD like symptoms than anxiety symptoms, effects on dopamine signaling, object location impairment and more. This shows that there are long-term effects on an adolescent's brain after they have suffered from many mTBIs or mild concussions.
Dr. Krizman and the researchers on repeated concussions have both shown that concussions are anything but a mild bump to the head. There is ample evidence to show that someone who gets a concussion, especially if it is repeated, will have struggles later on in life. While auditory may not be the same as behavioral symptoms, they both can have comorbid symptoms. Someone's auditory defects may lead to behavioral defects, or someone's dopamine signaling may be affected which then affects other psychiatric components.
I am incredibly curious to see how far Dr. Krizman's research goes into concussions, especially because a lot of concussions go unreported. As someone who did have a concussion and did not report it, I do wish I knew the long-term impacts before making the choice I did. I am also curious to see if there are any other markers that we can look at, like decreases in BDNF or elevated GFAP expressions, to diagnose concussions and help players heal with as little long-term effects as possible
References
Kraus, N., Thompson, E. C., Krizman, J., Cook, K., White-Schwoch, T., & LaBella, C. R. (2016). Auditory biological marker of concussion in children. Scientific Reports, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39009
Godinho, D. B., Severo Feiteiro, L. M., Cassol, G., Cipolat, R. P., Bressan, G. N., Fachinetto, R., Oliveira, M. S., Furian, A. F., Fighera, M. R., & Freire Royes, L. F. (2025). Recurrent spaced concussions in adolescent rats disrupt cortical dopaminergic markers and induce behavioral hyperactivity and impaired object location memory. Neuroscience, 585, 28–39. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452225008917
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